Gun deaths in the US

Some important information turned up on the open thread courtesy of thefrollikingmole (possibly my favourite pseudonym). Read it all. The case for concealed carry is clear. The best protection against mad and bad people with guns is other people with concealed weapons that they can use effectively.

The statistics in the Washington Post report reflect the story I was told at the Friedman Conference. The author isolated the US homicide figures for notorious hot spots from the nation at large. Looking at the rest of the nation the rate dropped from top of the world to a distant place on par with most other places in the western world. The hot spots were mostly derelict inner city areas where people of a certain kind were killing each other in very large numbers. I think he went further in the analysis and found certain quite small sub-groups within those hot spots where most of the murder and mayhem was happening. I don’t recall his plans for publication, I think he was carefully checking his analysis to be sure he had got it right because it was a very politically incorrect piece of work.

From the Washington Post.

A distinct pattern emerged: In Democratic regions of the country, which tend to be cities, people are more likely to be murdered with a gun than they are to shoot themselves to death. In regions of the country won by Republicans, which tend to be rural areas and small towns, the opposite is true — people are more likely to shoot themselves to death than they are to be murdered with a gun.

This pattern, explored in more detail in the graphic below, could partially explain differing partisan views on the issue of gun control, experts say, though they added more analysis would be necessary to prove a direct link. In the most Democratic regions, gun violence is more often committed against another, crimes that probably generate more news coverage and fear. In the most Republican areas, it is more often committed against oneself, suicides that may not attract as much attention.

As the below charts show, Democratic areas (measured by the party that controls the congressional district) are far more likely to experience almost all forms of malicious gun violence than Republican areas. These charts exclude suicides, for which data are not available on a congressional district basis, so it only breaks down the fraction of gun violence that is accidental or confrontational.

In almost all cases, guns kill or injure more children, teens and people in Democratic districts. Mass shootings, which vary widely in number depending how restrictive your definition is, occur more often in Democratic districts.

Venezuelans are now defenseless against a government that runs roughshod over their civil liberties, while also destroying their economic livelihood. As if it weren’t enough, everyday Venezuelans must put up with rampant crime and the constant threat of colectivos, Venezuela’s infamous pro-government paramilitary units.

Although gun control in and of itself does not automatically lead to tyranny, historical events remind us that well-intentioned interventions from previous governments can be used by the next round of political operatives for nefarious purposes. Firearms bans, confiscation, and registration give the state a virtual monopoly on violence, thus turning its citizens into defenseless subjects. When the rubber meets the road, a disarmed populace has no chance against a well-armed Leviathan.

Foreigners may scoff at the US’s Second Amendment, but it is one of the most far-reaching rights the framers of the Constitution made sure to protect. Political turmoil can emerge at any time and citizens must have a final means of protecting themselves in the case that all institutional options have been exhausted.

In the most Democratic regions, gun violence is more often committed against another, crimes that probably generate more news coverage and fear.

Interesting. Meanwhile the Democrat contenders for the top job are pushing, very hard, to confiscate guns which would, by all accounts, mostly affect their poorer intercity base assuming of course that murdering criminals living in Democrat shitholes all passed background checks in the first place.

Funny that; criminals will never give up their right to overpower the weak or unsuspecting by any means necessary on the one hand, and lawmakers slowly removing the right to self defence for everyone else on the other.

Neil
#3096576, posted on July 3, 2019 at 9:04 pm
You people are as crazy as the lefties I usually argue with. Other than you people who wants to live in a world where you walk around carrying guns?

If I shared a nation with a significant defined ‘demographic’ minority who commits most of the serious crime, and by crime I mean some really horrendous viscous sadistic acts, then yes. I want to be able to defend myself.

However I live in a nation that is generally peaceable, so no. That does not stop Australia being awash with illegal weapons, with shootings in western Sydney being the new normal. Fortunately I don’t live there and the shootings are confined to a particular demographic who generally keep their violence to themselves, but not always.

It does not mean everyone is carrying guns all the time, in the US practically all the guns are not being carried at any given time, apart from ones owned by the bad guys and people with an occupational requirement for hardware.

It is not necessary for everyone to carry guns. Just enough people who want to learn the skills to be effective in a crisis and also carry the weapon. Recall in the Paris mass shooting people were reduced to throwing shoes as the gunmen picked them off. One competent person with a gun in that crowd would have been enough.

Self-defense is an important aspect of Russian law, and the constitution guarantees the right to defend one’s property. Maxim Popenker, a firearms historian and editor-in-chief at world.guns.ru summarizes this by stating, “A constitutional right is to defend one’s life. And, according to the law, one can defend it with any means at his or her disposal, including different weapons.”

No legal prole guns in Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea or Iran or China or Cambodia or Eritrea.

So yes,I would rather live free in Montana or Wyoming or the Dakotas and have a gun rack in my pick-up than the other places.

So you admit you can’t argue the issue because the evidence is not in your favour.

Do you think Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons? If not why not?

Since 1979, the Mullahs have been saying they will wipe out Israel.
If a bloke consistently said he will mass murder my family, then no, I don’t want him to have a weapon of any kind. I rather have the weapon to deter the fvckwit.

It is my impression that the discussion of gun violence in the US is nonsensically dishonest and a product of a culture in denial. The overwhelming majority of violent crime is committed by black Americans, then in second place are “Hispanics” (I put it in quotes because I feel like there’s something odd or artificial going on with that category, but not sure what), and in a very distant third place are white Americans. Without the black crime rate, as I recall, American shooting and murder rates would resemble Canada. America does have a unique problem with insane mass shootings, and those are mostly committed by whites, but they are like terrorist acts, horrifying and attracting a lot of attention but not actually the bulk of the casualties.

This is the Washington Post so race isn’t mentioned at all, but even the conservative discussion here focuses on political party rather than race. Even if you wish to maintain that Democrat policy is the root cause of the problem – and I would think that social liberalism is definitely a factor, in that its disintegrative effects seem to have been most pronounced among blacks – there is such a thing as black community, black culture, black identity in America, and the people who are shooting each other come from that world. So any significant reduction in the problem has to happen there as well.

because that is what you people are saying whether you believe it or not

No, that is not what “you people are saying”.
It may be what YOU believe we are saying but it is not what we are saying.
Your attempt to equate the carriage of a firearm by a private citizen with no offensive intentions with the acquisition of nuclear capability by a government with openly expressed hostile intentions to an identified regional entity is morally reprehensible.

Your attempt to equate the carriage of a firearm by a private citizen with no offensive intentions with the acquisition of nuclear capability by a government with openly expressed hostile intentions to an identified regional entity is morally reprehensible

No it is not. Iran would say they want nuclear weapons to defend themselves just like Israel says. In fact Israel most probably has nuclear weapons.